Posts tagged raid-finder

The raid cycle of World of Warcraft's endgame begins anew today with the advent of Highmaul. While this raid did not go live with Warlords of Draenor's release, Blizzard is now opening the doors a crack to let in players for their first taste of epic combat.
Highmaul is a seven-boss raid, althou...

WoW's 10th anniversary celebration started today, and with it came what is now my favorite mount in the game. This Core Hound one of those mounts you have to see to believe. There's something incredibly cool about stomping around on one of these bad boys, especially with my matching hunter pet and ...

Traditional class tier sets will no longer be available in LFR difficulty in Warlords of Draenor. You'll need to run normal, heroic, or mythic to get your hands on tier 17 gear. That doesn't mean LFR-exclusive raiders will be entirely without set bonuses. In the latest beta build, Blizzard has adde...

I still like tanking and healing more than anything else in the game, but they have their deficiencies while you're trying to smash Hexos into a well-deserved stain on the floor. In order to finish off Brawler's Guild achievements, I went DPS for the first time in 6 years and then thought, "This i...

I've been thinking about the changes coming to LFR ever since yesterday's big post about raiding in Warlords. One of the things that seems really clear about the changes is that LFR is now seen as part of a progression path for raiding - at least some players are expected to go from LFR to normal r...

Blizzard has posted parts one and two of a series of Dev Watercoolers, discussing raid design over the course of World of Warcraft. Now part three is live, highlighting and explaining where raiding is going in Warlords of Draenor. The post covers new systems like the Group Finder (basically integra...

Yesterday Lead Game Designer Ion "Watcher" Hazzikostas published a fascinating Dev Watercooler blog that discussed the history and evolution of raid design in World of Warcraft. That article was part one of a three-part series, and looked into the way that raiding developed from WoW's original rele...

Raid finders, dungeon finders, and various LFG mechanics are becoming a modern MMO staple, but apart from throwing together five or six strangers and hustling them through a piece of content, they don't strike me as being particularly social.
I do use them to clear content I otherwise can't do, ...

Ion "Watcher" Hazzikostas, the Lead Encounter Designer for World of Warcraft, has already told us that proving grounds will be updated for Warlords of Draenor. In a move that helps explain why, he dropped some late night news yesterday in the form of dungeon progression information.
In short, if...

I've tanked a few LFR's lately. The thing is, I didn't mean to.
I don't mean I pulled aggro. I mean that when I queued, I forgot that I had tank selected alongside DPS. I do this in five man heroics I'm running for justice points as well. When I find myself selected to tank the dungeon (often on...

Recently I wrote a small article wondering whether the fabled Monday night Raid Finder festival of ugly death was just an urban legend. Opinions in the comment section were mixed, so I wanted to do a little ingame research to figure out whether the conventional wisdom was right and Mondays are an u...

After my guild finished raid on Monday, we voted to do the fourth wing of Siege of Orgrimmar in flex for another shot at Garrosh's heirlooms. Before queuing for flex, people took a break to let their dogs out, get something to drink, or jump on alts to do their farming. My fellow tank hopped to his...

Blizzard Community Manager Lore has been posting about the future roles of Flex, the new Group Finder, and Raid Finder in Warlords of Draenor. You can, as usual, see Lore's full post after the break, but what he's talking about is how, thanks to the success of Flex as a raid system and the resulta...

Panser of TradeChat is back with this week's WoW Insider Weekly News Recap. We take a look at last week's most interesting news and tidbits of information including WoW's 9th anniversary and some new features available on the PTR such as cross-realm mailing. The full list of topics covered this wee...

It was announced at BlizzCon that Blizzard would be launching a revamped raid finding system, potentially in response to oQueue's huge popularity in finding groups for Flex and for things like the Celestial bosses required for the Legendary cloak. Lead Encounter Designer Ion "Watcher" Hazzikostas ...

A few days ago, the player Camaranth started a thread on the tank forums examining the number of tank swap mechanics in raids. While the discussion is a good one, there's a reply written by Snuzzle not far down the thread with an interesting observation. "I think the reason we are seeing so many e...

It's been a long road for the Alliance and Horde, the perennially at-war factions that fuel much of World of Warcraft's lore (and PvP). Over the last few years, players waved the Alliance or Horde banner as they conquered old gods, dispatched massive dragons, toppled titans, and even crushed a walk...

Buried beneath proclamations of love or hate for WoW's group and raid finding tools lurks a common contradiction I find most players don't like to discuss: Do they use or not use these features despite their feelings? I'm a put-your-money-where-your-mouth-is kind of person, so when I hear players f...

Patch 5.4's Siege of Orgrimmar is available for testing on the PTR raid finder for the weekend of July 19 - 22. If you're looking for something to do this weekend, why not head over to the PTR and check it out? The first part of Siege of Orgrimmar involves the first four bosses. This is another big...

In the olden days of World of Warcraft, it took 40 dedicated people to down some of the game's toughest content. It wasn't easy to keep a guild stocked with the necessary number of people to make these raids possible, and Blizzard reduced raid sizes to 10- and 25-man encounters starting with the Bu...